“A pretty big pipperino, hey?” asked Tom.
“Oh, about seventy-five feet—well, maybe fifty, say. If I had that boat, Slady, I’d beat it for Japan and I’d come back by way of the Suez Canal. Two thousand bucks, that’s cheap for that boat, Slady. If I had two thousand bucks I’d buy that boat in a minute.
“You would, huh?”
“You tell ’em I would. It’s got everything in it, Slady, bunks, cook stove, compass, everything. Why I’d give a couple of hundred bucks just for that compass alone, I would.”
It is hard to say why Hervey would have paid such a price for a compass since he never cared in which direction he went and when you are climbing a tree or a telegraph pole, you need no compass to inform you that you are going up.
“Why, that rich man must want to give it away, Slady,” Hervey continued. “Two thousand bucks! Why it’s worth about, oh about ten or fifteen thousand anyway—maybe twenty. It’s a regular ocean liner. There’s a ladder up the side and everything; you just grab it and—”
“Oh, you swam out to it?” Tom asked. “It’s anchored off shore?”
“You can just kindly mention that I did. I swam out to it and all around it and everywhere. There’s a no trespassing sign; you just grab hold of that and pull yourself right up, easy as pie.”
“I see.”
“Maybe a lot of us could club together and buy it, hey?” said Hervey.